Twitter Seeks To Stop The Spread Of Crypto Scams

As social media companies focus on preventing harmful content from spreading across their platforms, Twitter seeks to stop cryptocurrency scams from circulating as well. But it’s not clear exactly which measures the company is taking to address the issue, Bloomberg reported.

Twitter is aware of crypto “manipulation,” and the company said it’s taking steps to “prevent these types of accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg.

The spokesperson made the comments after Bloomberg asked about the @Bitcoin Twitter handle. People who visited the @Bitcoin profile page reportedly saw a message that said the account was temporarily offline.

“Caution: This account is temporarily restricted,” the message read, according to Bloomberg. “You’re seeing this warning because there has been some unusual activity from this account.”

However, the profile page was displaying tweets as of 3:52 P.M. on Wednesday (March 7). The account, which was created Aug. 2011, focuses on “Bitcoin News, Information and Price Tweets” and has just over 800,000 followers.

In addition, the official customer service Twitter account of Kraken said it was banned from Twitter on Tuesday (March 6) for posting tweets warning people how cybercriminals steal digital assets. The account is reportedly no longer banned.

The news comes as Facebook announced it is not interested in running cryptocurrency ads, Recode reported in January. It planned to ban ads that promote “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”

Beyond its own mobile app, Facebook will also ban such ads on Instagram. The platform also planned to prevent crypto ads from running within its network of third-party apps.

Besides social media platforms, banks have been instituting their own crypto bans. Lloyds Banking Group said in February that it would ban its clients from buying the marquee crypto (that would be bitcoin, of course) using credit cards, which comes on the heels of similar bans from Citigroup and JPMorgan.